Madison Snow Report: Disappointing

The report reviewing city of Madison policies for removing snow is a disappointment.

The Review of Madison Snow Policies 

I am not going to go through the report in detail, but simply discuss the fatal flaws underlying the Madison response to the December 9, 2009 storm and other major storms of the past three years.

Over the past decade Madison has abandoned its basic commitment to snow removal.

The reduction in snow removal is factually supported  by the city budget, the inventory of the city snow removal fleet, the contracts for private plowing operations, and the miles of city streets.

A combination of factors conspired to produce this result:

• After 1999, Madison did not increase the budget for snow removal commensurate with inflation and growth.
• The city retired plowing vehicles and did not replace them.
• The city adopted winter parking policies for the downtown which made it more difficult for plows to navigate narrow car-choked streets, driving up snow removal costs.

No one will acknowledge this. Not one elected official has said a word. The news media chooses not to examine the facts.

While the report touches on 'the new ELAM program,' providing the public with "An Action Report,' and  'purchasing additional chains for plows to prevent them from getting stuck' it never address the elementary matter of public policy. 

Who Made the Decision in the Past Decade to Reduce This Basic Service?

All of this happened without a conscious decision by the legislative body, the Common Council.  While some commentators say, "Suck it in, get a life and learn to live with it," there are those of us who have a higher standard when it comes to the formulation of public policy.

We believe these matters should be publicly discussed with date and facts

Here is what we need to know:

• How much does it cost to fight a 6 inch or 15 inch storm if the city were to use the standards of the period from 1950-2000?
• How much additional equipment is needed from both the private and public sector?
• What are the costs of failure to efficiently combat such a storm?

• The cost to the school district for closing
• The cost to individuals and businesses in lost wages and revenues
• The environmental and financial cost of the resulting congestion

The Issue Was Never Properly Framed

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that one council member said the report was , "a responsible balance between preserving main thoroughfares and arteries as well as meeting neighborhood needs."

That is true if you accept the notion that the city is committing adequate resources to plowing in this storm or any other storm no matter how small or large.

The report, unlike a well reasoned undergraduate paper, never challenges the flawed premise that the only option is plowing the major streets and leaving the residential streets or plowing everything inadequately.

What Did Your Council Member Do?

Every member of the city council, especially those who served more than one term should tell us when they voted to reduce snow plowing and why they took that position.

Cieslewicz said he and other city officials framed the question during the last storm as an either/or one - pull all 30 plows from main streets or none of them.

They should explain how why they voted to cut back on snow removal so that the city was left with this problem.

One council member wrote,

Paul, it's true that the city is plowing more miles of street with less equipment and less staff per mile of street (not total). That's because technology (bigger and more reliable trucks) has made that possible. That's called efficiency and prudent use of resources (your tax dollars) to deliver services. So it's not true that comparing current data with 10 or 20 years ago would produce "an instant explanation of what went wrong" because the comparison itself is invalid.

Read this carefully and then ask these questions:

• Why did you decide to plow more miles of streets with less equipment?
• How much less equipment are you using now that compared to ten years ago?
• If modern technology and bigger more reliable trucks are out there, then why are the results 25% worse?
• How is efficient is it to save the city $100,000 and then watch the community lose millions of dollars in productivity, $250,000 in additional gasoline consumption as a result of the congestion, lower safety from increased accidents and the inability of emergency vehicles to navigate city streets, and the loss of business sales and sales tax revenues?

Why can't someone tell the truth? Why not admit that a series of decisions led to lower levels of service which resulted from a combination of conscious and unconscious decisions?

One More Thing 

The report states, "...there is evidence to suggest that extreme weather has been hitting Madison - and indeed the entire world..."

This lame introduction to the conclusion of the report is refuted by the report's own supporting documents, which includes the total snow for every winter since 1980-81. In the period from 1998-99 through 2006-2007, which covers nine winters, Madison had five seasons with less than 38.2 inches of snow and none of those seasons exceeded 55.2 inches.

If we look at every winter between 1980-81 and 1997-98 we see that of those eighteen winters, fourteen of those winters exceeded 41 inches of snow.

There were three winters with 71.2 inches or more, 1985-86, 1992-93, and 1993-94.

All that happened is that we are reverting to the norm.

My guess is that the relatively light winters from 2001-02 through 2005-06 lulled decision makers into complacency and contributed to the urge to cut back on snow removal.

 

 

Comments

[R.J.]

They were duped. It's just another consequence of the global warming hoax.

1) Outfit the police/fire/EMT with Subaru's and Blizzak tires.
2) Hand out shovels and 5-Star brandy to the bums.
3) Put plows on the front of the hipsters' bikes.

[Shorty]

Excellent questions. As I previosly said it still takes the same amount of time to plow between point A and point B and NO amount of technology is greatly going to change this fact. It still takes common sense and basics in plowing and no "spin' Hand wringing" " political hot air" "task force" "snow report" is going to change the facts.Madison got what it asked for so keep slip sliding away. You deserve it until some common sense takes over.

[Barry Orton]

Today I took my wife's car in for the $700 in body work that was a direct result of this problem. A neighbor slid slowly into her at at stop sign 2 blocks from home 6 days after the storm. There's the rental car for 2 days, and the hassle of bringing the car in and picking it up. So it's about $1000 for one of thousands of similar incidents, most of which never even make it into police reports.

OTOH, the body shop people said that business more than doubled since the storm, so there is a silver lining for some in all this.

[antpoppa]

I would suggest that the current weather patterns are a snapshot, rather than a long term trend. However, if we continue to have Tsunami like snow storms that cost as much as has been presented, we should reconsider transportation options and population sprawl. One step that I would like to see is the enlargement of city bus stops to accommodate taxis, and private mass transit vehicles i.e. small buses, during overload conditions or special hours. Waiting for 2 hours in freezing weather for a delayed city bus..

[mike]

Paul, This is one of those rare cases when I find myself in complete agreement with you. Firstly, the current people in charge of running the city have been in denial about our climate. They bought the line that the planet was warming and that Wisconsin was turning into Arkansas. Yes, they actually said that....and planned accordingly. The trouble with being delusional is that reality eventually bites you in the face. Just look at the four day storm over Christmas....we could very easily have received another 18-20 inches of snow. We just got lucky and it shifted west.....I just don't know how to bring common sense back to Madison...You are right that this report is sadly lacking in sound reasoning...or any kind of logic.....so very sad.

[wort]

"2) Hand out shovels and 5-Star brandy to the bums."

The cheap stuff should do the trick.

[Mark Clear]

Paul, you fail both statistics and climatology. Overall snowfall during a season does not give any indication of the severity or duration of individual storms.

[Paul]

Mark- your attack on my skills as a statistician is bogus, but more importantly does not change the fact that the city has reduced its commitment to snow plowing.

I am not familiar with current data, but for a forty year period the city averaged seven plowing storms a season - that would be a depth of three inches or greater.

If you turn to the Piraino Report (she wrote it, not me) you will see that there is a correlation between the inches of snow each winter and the number of contracted plowings, the major storm.

If you did not know this from discussions with Public Works when reviewing the snow removal portion of the budget, I apologize.

You are correct - it is possible that in two different seasons of 24 inch total accumulation, one might have had two storms of 12 inches the first year and 24 storms of one inch the second year. The first season would require two major plowings, the other none.

But if you examine your own report you will see that there is a correlation between total inches and and the number of contracted plowings.

In fact the city of Madison ONCE BUDGETED snow removal based on the cost of plowing, figuring total number of inches expected in the harshest winters times the lane miles of city streets. AND the city also ALWAYS approved supplemental appropriations when this was underestimated. In other words, lack of funds was never an excuse for not plowing.

That is not done today. It is not done because there is not enough equipment and there are at least seven public works positions frozen to accumulate salary savings.

If you would like to review this further, please request the item be placed on the Board of Estimates Agenda, have the Comptroller, the Streets Superintendent, HR Director and budgets for the past twenty years available and we can wrap up this discussion.

Mark, if you want to lower the standard for snow removal, that is a perfectly acceptable choice, but to ignore the fact that the city no longer has the capability to clear snow as it did ten or twenty years is silly. My concern is not just the change in policy -- the concern is that it was made without adequate information and discussion.

[Mark Clear]

Paul, I accept your challenge; this item is on the agenda for Tuesday's CCOC meeting (108 CCB at 4:30). I hope you will attend.

[Paul]

Mark:

Thanks for the invitation to attend the council organizational meeting tonight but I have previous plans. Herer are some things to think about:

If I have the facts correct, in 1990 the city had at least 75 pieces of snow removal equipment. (I believe that when we include other equipment converted to snow removal, it was closer to 90.) Today it is 90. If we assume the miles of city street are correlated to lane miles, to keep up with growth the city needs at least 97 pieces of equipment.

Of course to do a valid comparison, we need to know if the size of the equipment is the same.

I suggest that be the starting point – looking at the amount of equipment and comparable snow removal capability.

Next I would look at staffing, Budgets are useful planning tools, but they are before the fact. They do not reveal the actual expenditures and more importantly the actual number of pieces of equipment put on the road.

For example, my understanding is the because of salary savings, Public Works has seven frozen positions. Clearly, the budget would not reflect that.

Then there is the question of the private contractors. I know there were problems with some on the west side a few years ago. Was there improved performance? If they were dismissed, were they replaced?

I would also look at what happened when the old garbage trucks were retired – how were they replaced for snow removal?.

My understanding is that the decline in snow removal commitment occurred before Dave became mayor. I would like to know how that happened, but I would not use that as the baseline since it represents a lower level of service.

To do a real service to the people of Madison, I would ask what would it take in terms of capital and operating budget commitments to the period from 1960-2000.

Finally, we have had additional cuts in parks and other public works services. Janet’s report suggests that if we increased the commitment to snow removal, we would have idle staff and equipment the rest of the year. Not true if we were to make a commitment to return other public works services that were cut the rest of the year.